HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center released the following statement from Director Marc Stier on the current state of SB22, the redistricting reform bill:

“The current version of SB22 is a deeply flawed bill. As modified by Senator Folmer, it fails to provide Pennsylvanians with the redistricting reform we deserve. Supporters claim it creates an independent redistricting commission that operates under rules that prohibit partisan gerrymandering, but we know that the omnibus amendment proposed by Senator Folmer falls short of fixing its profound structural weaknesses in three basic ways.

The Republican who have again introduced legislation to create “work requirements” for recipients of Medicaid and SNAP (also known as Food Stamps) may well be motivated in part by their desire to encourage more Pennsylvanian’s to hold jobs. But their punitive and bureaucratic proposal will not do enough to help people work and may well actually make it harder for them to do so. At the same time, it will make it harder for people who deserve health care and food assistance to secure it while not saving our state much money. And at the same time, they proposals will damage the health care industry and raising insurance premiums for all of us.

Marc Stier, Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, released the following statement on the passage of the U.S. Senate GOP tax bill:

"Budgets are, it is frequently said, moral documents. If that is true, and we believe it is, then the tax plan adopted by the Senate today represents an extreme moral failure on the part of the Republican Party. At a time when incomes are becoming ever more unequal, the Republican tax plan will ultimately make the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer. It will benefit corporations at the expense of families. And, because of the repeal of the individual mandate, it will cost 13 million people nationwide — and 500,000 in Pennsylvania — health insurance leading to 1000 to 2000 premature deaths in our state alone.

Marc Stier, Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, released the following statement on the announcement that the U.S. Senate GOP will include a repeal of the Affordable Care Act individual mandate in their tax bill.